Los Angeles Does Not Reflect America

Los Angeles doesn't really reflect the rest of America. Sure, this is the United States. We are Americans (most of us, anyway). And L.A. is Hollywood's perpetual stand-in for Anytown, U.S.A.

But personal-finance website WalletHub confirmed that Los Angeles is in a league of its own compared with the rest of the nation. The site looked at metrics such as age, gender, income, household demographics and housing tenure to determine "2015's Metro Areas That Most and Least Resemble the U.S."

Out of 381 cities examined, L.A. ranked 284th overall. The lower the ranking, the less a city is like the rest of the nation.

Dennis Romero has worked on staff at several magazines and newspapers, including the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Los Angeles Times, where he participated in Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the L.A. riots. His work has appeared in Rolling Stone online, the Guardian, and, as a
young stringer, the New York Times.